Meet “PRISM,” the National Security Administration’s A+ “Intro to Orwell” Final Project

And with that, the brief window in which non-Verizon users could feel superior to Verizon users has closed—but that doesn’t mean the government can’t see behind it.

Yes, things can now return to normal—that is, all cell-phone customers can feel equally terrible, as disturbing new reports in The Guardian and elsewhere allege that more than half a dozen or so technology companies are involved in something ominous-sounding called PRISM. What is PRISM? A six-year-old National Security Administration program that facilitates “extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information” including “email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, [and] social networking details” the purview of which includes users of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple, according to The Guardian.

Google and Apple explicitly denied their willing involvement—and there’s not necessarily a reason not to believe them, as PRISM “allows the [N.S.A.] to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers.” In a statement, yet another anonymous government employee said the following:

The program is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.

*The Guardian,*however, reports that “only non-U.S. persons” actually just means that the N.S.A. was merely required to have “reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected.” Smash cut to N.S.A. offices:

N.S.A. Employee No. 1: “I’m looking at an e-mail from this guy, and he’s telling his wife how hot it is outside.”

N.S.A. Employee No. 2: “‘Hot’? You know where it’s hot?”

Both together: “Iran!”

The Guardianhas also posted slides of what appears to be an intro-to-PRISM PowerPoint presentation. Note that the N.S.A. clearly did not bother to spy on capable Photoshop users before putting that thing together.